Securing MCP Connections Through Your AI Gateway

MCP Gives Agents the Keys — Who's Watching the Door? The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is rapidly becoming the standard way AI agents interact with external tools — databases, file systems, APIs, code repositories. Instead of hardcoding integrations, developers expose MCP servers that agents discover and call dynamically. This is powerful. It's also a massive expansion of your attack surface. MCP effectively gives an AI model the ability to read files, query databases, make HTTP requests, and execute code — all based on instructions it receives in its context window. If an attacker can influence that context, they can influence what the agent does with your tools. Most MCP security guidance focuses on building secure servers. That's important, but it's only half the picture. If your team consumes third-party MCP servers — or even internal ones you didn't write — you need security at the point where traffic flows: the gateway. The MCP Attack Surface Before diving into defenses, let's map